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Rawk - Post any rocks you make here!

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  • Sebvhe
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    Sebvhe greentooth
    Hey guys, I have a question about making the low poly for the rocks. I'd show you images, but I'm doing this at work.
    Making the low poly model concerns me. I've tried using Meshlab, and it's given me mixed results (like overlapping geo and other issues), making the meshes unusable without a lot of cleanup. The decimation master in zbrush seems to do better, but I still get somewhat mixed results there too and have to clean it up. How do all of you go about making your low poly models? Especially Sebvhe, that is really impressive!

    My other issue is when I bake the normal maps. I get ugly artifacts/triangles in the bake, and I'm not sure if it's what I'm baking in (xnormal), my uvmap, or the LP mesh itself. I've tried creating cages from the low polys too and I get the same results with the ugly artifacts.

    What is your process of making the low poly models and baking the maps for getting clean results? For production sake, I'm hoping the process is fairly simple and streamlined.
    For my big rocks I think it's just the regular decimation master and a little bit of cleaning, there was like 2-3 little artifacts. It works well because I don't have any holes or little rocks/objects, Everything is one big and quite simple mesh.
    For the small rocks, decimation master gave me awful result (and that was predictable since all the little stones put on each other to make a rock create a lot of holes and concavity) so I just retopologized by hand in 3d-Coat. This was rather time consuming, I should find other ways to do that.

    The baking is pretty simple, I just let the xNormal's Ray Distance Calculator run for a few minutes and I get almost no artifacts. I don't have any hard edges in my smoothing groups. I got some triangles artifacts in Marmoset (like if my rock was only hard edged) but it's only noticeable when you are close enough. You can easily avoid that in Toolbag 2 by changing the normal map type (or something like that) in the mesh options. I still haven't tried my rocks on any other engine so I might still get that issue later ...


    Oh and those few last rocks are mindblowing by the way :)
  • Makkon
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    Makkon polycounter
    Hmm, okay. I guess the creation of the mesh isn't where my problem is. Is it possible that having a bad UV map could cause artifacts in the bake?
  • armykillswitch
    Sebvhe, I would use a cage for best results.. I tend to use Zrememsher to remove any mesh Integrity issues an get a even distribution, that way you wont likely have overlapping an strange distribution of the Polys.
  • Sebvhe
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    Sebvhe greentooth
    @ Makkon : I don't know much about UV and artifacts in the bake. Do you get your artifacts the same in multiple engines ?

    @armykillswitch : You're right I must admit I don't know much about cages... I always feel like it will take much more time to create the cage than it will take to fix a few artifacts.
    And you're also right about Zremesher or something like that. I was thinking about 3DCoat's voxels features to clean my topology.
  • armykillswitch
    In Xnormal to get a cage, is go to 3d viewer after you pick your LP and HP, check show cage, edit cage then use the cage global extrusion to push out the cage so it covers the entire mesh, Save meshes as a Sbm and then bake away.
  • Makkon
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    Makkon polycounter
    Well, until I figure out how to properly bake, here's some zbrush tests I did using the Trim Smooth Border brush with a square alpha and Clay Buildup, with a bit of Orb Crack.

    As seen here
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auk3mKdKEwg"]Zbrush 4 quick rock sculpting with TrimSmoothBorder - YouTube[/ame]

    redrock_test.png
  • Mr Smo
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    Mr Smo polycounter lvl 18
    makkon - thats reeeeeeeeeeally cool and thanks for the vid!
  • lucashug
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    lucashug polycounter lvl 6
    Nice Rock Makkon!
  • rikcharr
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    rikcharr polycounter lvl 5
    Not much, but its a rock.

    vn2v.jpg
    4spr.jpg
  • modebloggen
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    modebloggen polycounter lvl 9
    Hey guys, thought I would upload a rock I made today. Its my first rock ever, and there are some butt ugly seams... But on the other hand, it has some fancy coloured lights! So.. it's something.

    http://goote.ch/QEnLopoiS0GSfrrf8aomaQ/

    If you click the link you can look at it in a 3D view as well!

    Wb1xArH.png
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    Here are some rocks I sculpted for a scene I am working on. These are the low poly baked results. Mind the low-resolution diffuse map, it was just for testing purposes.
    rNorBw3.jpg

    Same rock, mashed together.
    NdoJYAC.jpg
  • Makkon
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    Makkon polycounter
    Now that is a prime example of what you can do when you sculpt a good rock. Excellent work, Prophecies!

    Could I ask you about your low-poly creation (and uvmap) and baking process?
  • Pennywise
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    Pennywise polycounter lvl 18
    Some really good stuff in here. This was my first rock attempt in Zbrush. Got to say I had a lot of fun making it, going to be doing more for sure.

    RockCliff_02.jpg
  • narticus
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    narticus polycounter lvl 7
    Nice, I dig it. Looking to make similar ones for my scene. How did you make the horizontal grooves?
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    Makkon wrote: »
    Now that is a prime example of what you can do when you sculpt a good rock. Excellent work, Prophecies!

    Could I ask you about your low-poly creation (and uvmap) and baking process?

    Thanks, man!
    It was a fairly simple process. I merely used Decimation Master to get the low poly mesh density I wanted. My rock hovers around the 700 tri mark. In this particular case, I didn't bother cleaning the decimation master result, and I didn't get any artifacts anywhere. I could probably drop the polycount down to around 600 tri's without noticing any difference, but speed was of the essence.
    I'll probably get around to cleaning it up/optimizing and rebaking soon. Because it is a static mesh that won't be deformed, decimation master worked flawlessly. It's such a great tool for organic objects.

    As for the UV mapping, it is all unwrapped with a single UV island. Because of the type of rock I sculpted, the seams were easy to hide/place in the corners/rock intersections. There is not a single seam that covers a large flat area of the rock, so essentially, the AO and Normal map hide the seams on their own.

    For the UV process, I used UV Master in Zbrush to paint the seams where I wanted to, and baked in xNormal.
  • Pennywise
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    Pennywise polycounter lvl 18
    Nice, I dig it. Looking to make similar ones for my scene. How did you make the horizontal grooves?

    Thanks, I just made a couple alpha brushes for the groves and small details. I am hoping that they come through when I bake it out.
  • MrNinjutsu
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    MrNinjutsu greentooth
    in the process of making a huge one

    6Jedk7O.png
  • narticus
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    narticus polycounter lvl 7
    Very nice. Zbrush?
  • Owl
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    Owl polycounter lvl 6
    @ MrNinjutsu - That is a pretty sweet looking sculpt. The only problem is going to be getting a decent resolution out of the bake. This is an issue in general with doing sculpted rocks. Its hard to get good resolution without keeping them medium-small size according to player scale. Even with a 2048, you're going to find that it won't be close to enough resolution to give you a nice texture at that size. (at least if its in a game where you can walk up to it and look at it. For a top down game, it would be different.) You might get away with doing that rock as a baked down texture and then using some kind of detail diffuse/normal that fades in at closer range to overlay higher res rock detail over your low res large texture.

    I have found, to get a rock formation like you are trying to do there, that it is better to either use several smaller baked rocks crashed together to get the same shape, do it all with tiling textures, or a combination of both tiling textures on a big mesh with some sculpted rocks mixed in for shape.

    This all only really applies if you're doing this for a game asset.

    Anyways, these are just some challenges I have found as I have done rocks for games. Looks good tho! Look forward to seeing what you do with it.
  • Pennywise
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    Pennywise polycounter lvl 18
    OK got my rock all baked out and in the engine. If anyone has any comments or critiques I would appreciate it.

    RockBake03.jpg


    RockBake04.jpg
  • Higuy
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    Higuy polycounter lvl 9
    I have a quick question for everyone that creates awesome rocks:

    How do you go about unwrapping it the best way possible, so that seems and such aren't noticeable at all once in the preferred editor? I always seem to get some seems that, while not always totally noticeable, are there and just bug the hell out me. Whats the best approach at doing the unwraps?
  • Mr Significant
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    Mr Significant polycounter lvl 11
    Try to hide them into Cracks, or after painting diffuse, go to ZBrush with it or to 3dcoat, and use something like clone stamp tool on the seams.

    In ZBrush there is something like painting from Photo, then u can use your diffuse map :thumbup:
  • sayoend
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    sayoend polycounter lvl 4
    Excellent work guys and girls... Here's mine

    In Mudbox

    t36x.jpg

    UDK

    pvkj.jpg

    2qu7.jpg
  • Mr Significant
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    Mr Significant polycounter lvl 11
    Great presentation on Mudbox, sayoend.

    Great textures! Incredible details!
  • Flight
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    Flight polycounter lvl 10
    Lovely thread, great stuff guys. Here is my humble addition, a set of somewhat dirty rocks. Feedback more than welcome.

    a4S8uO4.png
    RtkyJTe.png
    E3qCSBl.png
  • ken0y
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    ken0y polycounter lvl 7
    OK, I'm back with some progress. I've been practicing a stylised rock look that relies solely on the diffuse map:

    rR6HsJt.png

    cheers,

    K
  • Arkana
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    Arkana polycounter lvl 8
    I just made my first full tileable brick texture.

    0MPnIE0.png
    QyD6fvs.jpg
  • Mr Significant
  • Mr Significant
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    Mr Significant polycounter lvl 11
    And they are looking good!
  • Lance66
    layer_Cliff.jpg
    Awesome sedimentary rock, would look real good in any 3D environment, especially Vue :)
  • narticus
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    narticus polycounter lvl 7
    2nd and 3rd attempts at tileable textures in Zbrush:

    Brick_Wall_Marmoset001.jpg

    Stone_Wall_Marmoset002.jpg

    Would love to hear any feedback
  • NobleWulf
    Hey guys, I finally decided to get around to making some rocks as sculpting practice and as overall workflow practice as well. I think they came out pretty well for my first two rocks.

    I am still having trouble actually sculpting details into the rocks. I can't seem to control the intensity at which an alpha or brush eats away at the mesh while I am sculpting. I'm still trying to work out how to fix this if anyone has any suggestions. I am using a mouse by the way.

    DLKnuQR.jpg

    NGoonVT.jpg
  • Sir Apple
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    Sir Apple polycounter lvl 8
    NobleWulf wrote: »
    Hey guys, I finally decided to get around to making some rocks as sculpting practice and as overall workflow practice as well. I think they came out pretty well for my first two rocks.

    I am still having trouble actually sculpting details into the rocks. I can't seem to control the intensity at which an alpha or brush eats away at the mesh while I am sculpting. I'm still trying to work out how to fix this if anyone has any suggestions. I am using a mouse by the way.



    Zbrush or Mudbox?

    Its pretty simple (in zbrush anyway) to control brush intensity's. Hold space bar down and adjust the sliders.

    If you are using the "Standard" brush for Alphas, set it to drag react (this is also personal preference, but I feel it gives you the best control). You can also just subtract from the intensity by using things like Morph Target and the Morph brush after sculpting details into your asset.

    Something else you may perhaps find useful is the Layers, after adding detail onto a layer reduce the opacity of said layer. Though this only applies if you are using Zbrush ;)

    Oh also, get a tablet (even something cheap like a little Wacom Bamboo)
  • narticus
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    narticus polycounter lvl 7
    I am only a beginner zBrush user myself, but to me it feels like a tablet is essential, especially for that fine detail. Can you control intensity with a mouse?

    Maybe look into one of the monoprice tablets: http://www.monoprice.com/Search/Index?keyword=tablet

    Also- your rocks are looking great so far!
  • Benkeeling
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    Benkeeling polycounter lvl 10
    Working on some rocks for pod racer environment, here are HighPoly so far, let me know what you guys think :)

    LargeRocks02.png

    LargeRocks01.png
  • Mr Significant
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    Mr Significant polycounter lvl 11
    I think sculpting is only possible with tablet. Because You have this sensitivity control. With mouse you have only 0-1 input, which is click or non-click (sorry for my english).

    Also with tablet you have more control with the shape of sculpt, it's more organic, more natural.

    If you want to control of alpha intensity, just press Space, and change the intensity of brush.

    Also to control only the alpha: go to Alpha > modify, And there you have contrast, brightness, etc.

    And dont use the mouse, for organic sculpt.
  • Andre.Jonsson
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    Andre.Jonsson polycounter lvl 5
  • Visceral
  • Jonas Ronnegard
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    Jonas Ronnegard polycount sponsor
    some rocky stuff
  • D4V1DC
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    D4V1DC polycounter lvl 18
    Click for thread and bigger images.
    gWArnk2.jpg

    C&C Welcome as i got stuck, love the rocks people, this guy is supposed to be entirely rocks (Meteorites), my 2nd time making rocks, i should have viewed the how to make rocks thread but i didn't know it existed till i was already done.:(

    Live and learn, hope you like anyway, i have no problems redoing work where needed.
  • Kazperstan
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    Kazperstan greentooth
    Making some rocks for something else and got carried away..
    J0XYBkf.jpg
  • mettigel
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    mettigel polycounter lvl 6
    I made a new one. The shape is not the best. But i'm very happy about the Texture! Hope you People like it!



    render1fcl2g.jpg


    And here is some sick Rotation Action!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfLJvcB9Y5c&feature=youtu.be

    wirevubau.jpg

    texturesh6xpq.jpg
    render1.jpg.html
  • Sebvhe
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    Sebvhe greentooth
    Finally changed the rocks I made 2 and a half month ago :poly124:.

    1264 tris and 1024² Diffuse/Normal (no Spec for the moment) for the 4 meshes.

    YxR9h6H.jpg

    I'll start building the cave tomorrow.

    @mettigel, I think you can have way less polygons on that rock without any noticeable effect (unless this is a really big rock)
  • Fwap
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    Fwap polycounter lvl 13
    Yay looks awesome Sebvhe.
  • nathdevlin
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    nathdevlin polycounter lvl 12
    I've been waiting to add these to this thread of all that is rocky.

    ugv_sculpted_rocks_001.jpg

    ugv_sculpted_rocks_002.jpg
  • TheIceHeLater
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    TheIceHeLater polygon
    Here's my first experiment. Should have made the edges alot sharper etc, but I've learnt alot!

    screenshot002.png
  • achillesian
  • Joost
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    Joost polycount sponsor
    Yeah so many awesome rocks in this thread!
  • Mr Significant
  • narticus
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    narticus polycounter lvl 7
    Rock on, Mr S!

    That first rendering looks almost like a painting. How did you go about rendering that?
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